This morning I read an interesting “underdog” article about how a 16-year old, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa or “Pragg” for short, beat the world #1 Magnus Carlsen (31) at a game of chess… AND he was playing as black ♟️ !
(If you don’t play chess, the black pieces play 2nd after a white piece makes the first move. Normally the player who goes first has a slight advantage.)
Even so, Pragg was still able to get the win and he’s now the youngest player to beat Carlsen since he became World Champion in 2013.
What makes this win so interesting (to me anyway) is that he was able to remain “cool & collected” while under pressure from facing the best player in the world (who made some mistakes that presented opportunities for Pragg).
Now, if you feel like an “underdog” when it comes to running Facebook™ Ads to your own offers, and…
If you’ve ever felt the pressure of your ad spend going up each day with little to no sales to show for it…
You’ve probably experienced the opposite of “cool & collected”.
Maybe more like… “hot in the face & ready to pull your hair out!”
Especially when it feels like you are just donating money to Facebook™ (aka ad spend) without any sales in return, not to mention the frustration of feeling like all of your efforts have just been a waste of time.
So how was Pragg able to remain cool & collected?
The truth is he’s not so much of an underdog after all. He’s actually a grandmaster himself and became the youngest international master in history at the age of 10.
In other words, he was prepared.
Which is the opposite of what most people do when they start running Facebook™ ads to their own offers.
They put minimal thought into their ads and then wonder why very few people are clicking through and even less people buying (if any at all).
The first step to being prepared to run ads to your own offers is to first be informed about how the platform works.
We covered that in Part 1 of this series.
A quick recap:
Thing #1 – Facebook™ wants users to spend more time on the platform. The more time they are on the platform, the more ads they can serve to that user.
Thing #2 – A large portion of your potential customers aren’t already aware of the right solution to solve their problem for their very specific situation.
Thing #3 – With the recent privacy updates to many smart phones, Facebook™ no longer gets all the data it used to get so for this reason your ads aren’t always being shown to the right people (which can lead to some marking your ads as “spam” if they get tired of seeing your ad that isn’t relevant to them)
The solution to this as revealed in Part 1 was to create what I call a “Shareable Solution Ad”.
One, it’s an engaging ad so that people stop scrolling and actually read your ad, giving Facebook™ exactly what it wants.
Two, it gives your customers a better understanding of their problem and therefore as a result also makes them more open to trying your solution because…
“If you understand their problem better than they do, it is a small leap to assume that you must also know how to solve it!”
And three, it provides people who are not in your target audience with “social currency” which increases the likelihood of them sharing your ad instead of reporting it or choosing to “hide” your ad.
How Do You Write A Shareable Solution Ad?
Start your ad with an “insight” into a specific problem your product solves.
An insight is simply a piece of information or knowledge that gives the readers a new or different understanding of their existing problem.
Most people in your audience will already have an existing assumption or belief about how their problem “works”.
However, if they still have their problem, it is highly likely that their existing assumption or belief, while probably seen as “common wisdom”, is actually incorrect and therefore holding them back from solving their problem in the first place.
There are several different ways to provide an insight, but one of my favorite ways is to “redefine the problem.”
In short, the frame is…
“The problem isn’t A, it’s actually B, and here’s why.”
You can deliver that insight in just a few sentences or a few paragraphs.
In my tests, I’ve found that short and to the point insights beat out longer ones.
Works even better if each insight you create for your individual ads is targeted to a subgroup of your audience instead of the audience as a whole.
This way, that subgroup immediately recognizes your ad and engages with it because you are talking about their specific & “unique” situation.
From there the rest of the ad is fairly straightforward…
The “redefining the problem” insight introduces a new problem (B) which then opens up several new questions for the reader.
So the transition from your insight to the rest of your ad where you promote your product is now as simple as saying…
“So in order to solve that problem (or to answer those new questions that have now popped up as a result of the new or different understanding of the problem) you have created [name of product] that helps with [x, y, and z] which helps them with “B” which in turn solves “A”.
Then you end with a call to action of clicking to learn more or to purchase the product.
Here’s what you’ve just accomplished with this process…
You’ve engaged a very specific subgroup of your entire audience with something that looks like “trivia” (not like an ad) which gets them to stop scrolling and read your ad. (Facebook™ loves that.)
You’ve redefined a problem for that subgroup and have taken them from being frustrated and in some cases feeling hopeless that they haven’t been able to solve their problem to feeling excited and even hopeful that they can now actually do something about their problem with this new insight or understanding into what the real problem is.
And third, to the people who are not in your target audience but who are still seeing your ads anyway, you’ve just given them “social currency”. Many people like to be seen as or at least perceived as being “knowledgeable”, “useful”, “a source of wisdom” etc… and therefore even if on a subconscious level “higher status”.
Your ad is now something they can share on their timeline or in a message to everyone in their group of friends who IS part of the subgroup you are targeting and as their reward they are now seen as knowledgeable, useful, and a source of wisdom/value to their friends.
If you do this right, you can start seeing your Share to Reaction ratios as high as 60+% meaning that up to 6 out of 10 of the people who react with a like or a heart or something else ALSO share the ad.
That gets you more traffic, more social proof, and in turn more sales!
You don’t have to get it perfect…
1 – List out the different subgroups that exist within your audience.
2 – Pick a subgroup and list out their existing beliefs or assumptions about how their problem works.
3 – Pick three of those incorrect or misinformed beliefs or assumptions and write three different insights. Short insights are fine.
4 – Write your transition and short product promo at the bottom showing how your product solves the new problem or questions you have introduced…
And those are your next 3 ads.
Test them out and see how they convert for you.
Your first attempts may not be perfect, but just keep going and soon enough you’ll stumble on a winning ad that gets you sales like crazy!
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See you next time…
-Eddys Velasquez
P.S. So I shared a picture of tacos in Part 1 and promised to reveal why I used it. To be honest, it had nothing to do with the post itself but I’ve found that food tends to grab people’s attention and stops even busy people in their tracks – even if just for a second. “Oh, that looks good!” Sometimes it gets them to stop just long enough to read the first line of your ad, and then the next… and before they know it, they’ve read the whole thing.
Do with that what you will 😉